Profession
A profession is a craft or tradeskill that player characters may learn regardless of their character class, faction, or race. The first recipes you get are useful for gearing up low level characters (assuming a higher level character is not helping to support you). Some contend that as soon as you start running instances, the drops will usually be better than most crafted items from the same level, but this is not always the case. Quite often crafted items will provide comparable stats or utility benefits that are quite useful for characters of all levels. Many good high-level recipes are sold by factions. Faction grinding keeps many crafters busy for several weeks and can often be very expensive if you are not backed by a guild. It is not uncommon for a crafter to start out with two collecting professions (usually Skinning/Mining or Skinning/Herbalism), later learn the first production craft, and in the end learn a second production craft to maximize benefit from the faction. The most benefit to your character comes from trying to keep your professions leveled up as you progress through the game. High end crafting, including specializations, can be extremely useful and lucrative, especially from patterns that come from end game faction grinding or drop in high level instances (some of which Bind on Pickup. There are also several quests which require crafted items for completion. You may unlearn a profession and start a new one but this removes the chosen profession. If you were to learn it again, you would have to start leveling it from a skill level of 1 again. You will also forget any recipes you may have acquired in your old profession so they must be reacquired if you take it up again. The new profession you choose to replace it with also starts with a skill level of 1. You can unlearn a profession from your skills tab (the hotkey is k). To do so, click on the appropriate profession, and in the bottom part of the panel is a tiny icon that when moused over will tell you it lets you unlearn your profession. Be sure you really want to unlearn a profession; Blizzard will not undo it if you change your mind. Primary and Secondary Professions Professions are divided into two classes: primary and secondary professions. You can only have 2 primary professions at any time, but you are not required to take any at all. You may take as few as none or as many as all of the Secondary professions. Primary Professions You may train in up to 2 primary professions. Gathering Primary Professions * Enchanting - Disenchant items for enchanting supplies (via Disenchanting). * Herbalism - Gather herbs from the ground and some creatures. * Mining - Obtain ore from mineral veins and smelt it into bars. * Skinning - Skin dead creatures for leather, pelts, and scales. Crafting Primary Professions Sometimes referred to as "production" or "building" professions. * Alchemy - Create potions, elixirs, flasks and other alchemical goods. (specialize: Master of Potions, Master of Elixirs, or Master of Transmutation) * Blacksmithing - Create metal goods, such as weapons and armor. (specialize: Armorsmith or Weaponsmith. Further specialization for weaponsmiths: Swordsmith, Axesmith, or Hammersmith) * Enchanting - Add enhancements to items, such as stat boosts and special properties. * Engineering - Create mechanical devices and explosives, such as grenades, explosive sheep, mechanical pets, and many others. (specialize: Goblin or Gnomish Engineering) * Inscription (not yet released) Create inscriptions that modify existing spells and abilities. * Jewelcrafting - Create jewelry such as rings and trinkets, and create gems for items with sockets. * Leatherworking - Create leather goods such as leather armor and armor kits.(specialize: Dragonscale, Elemental, or Tribal Leatherworking) * Tailoring - Create cloth armor and bags. (specialize: Primal Mooncloth, Shadowcloth, or Spellcloth) Secondary Professions You may train as many of these secondary professions as you want. * Cooking - Cook food that can also provide temporary buffs. * First aid - Create bandages and poison-cleansing anti-venoms, * Fishing - Gather fish from lakes, rivers and oceans. * Riding - Required to ride a mount. Raising Skill At some point recipes are useless for skilling up (it will appear gray in profession window). When a recipe turns green, a skill raise occurs quite seldom. A yellow recipe will raise the skill roughly half the time used. An orange recipe should always raise skill 1 point. There is one exception to this rule, in the world of skinning. Skinning an orange mob does not guarantee a skill raise, should you succeed. You will usually need to skin a number of mobs at that level before you get a raise. The chance of skilling up changes within a color band as well. For example, if a particular item goes from orange to yellow at 240 and from yellow to green at 255, the chance of skilling up will be almost as good as orange from 240-245, middling from 245-250, and barely better than green from 250-255. It is often beneficial to make high yellow items to skill up more cost effectively than orange items, but low yellow items should only be used if very inexpensive (or if somebody actually needs the item!). Proficiency Levels Professions can be trained to 5 levels of proficiency. Some of the skills, especially gathering and secondary skills, do not have character level requirements for some levels. All require level 5 to get apprentice. All the primary, crafting skills have the level requirements. All the secondary skills have a quest which is given only at or above the level requirement for Artisan. Reputation All of the skills have reduced cost to train if you are Honored with the faction to which the trainer belongs. Since you can generally have 1 honored reputation by 20th level pretty easily, selecting where to train will save you . This is also true for all recipes for the building professions. Bonus to skill Bonus to skill, be it from racial or item bonuses, has a couple of benefits. Principally the chance to skill up is based off of the characters base skill level - i.e. the skill level before the racial or item bonus. This makes it much easier to level up the skill. The Draenei Jewelcrafting skill bonus of +5 for example, means that a recipe that went from orange to yellow at 30 for other races, would only go yellow at 35 for a Draenei jewelcrafter. Racial profession skill bonuses Certain races receive a profession skill bonus as a racial trait. * Gnome → +15 Engineering * Tauren → +15 Herbalism * Draenei → +5 Jewelcrafting * Blood Elf → +10 Enchanting Bonuses from enchants Certain enchants give profession skill bonuses. * Enchant Gloves - Fishing adds 2 to Fishing skill. * Enchant Gloves - Herbalism adds 2 to Herbalism skill. * Enchant Gloves - Mining adds 2 to Mining skill. * Enchant Gloves - Skinning adds 5 to Skinning skill. * Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining adds 5 to Mining skill. * Enchant Gloves - Advanced Herbalism adds 5 to Herbalism skill. Bonuses from equipment Certain items give profession skill bonuses. * adds +10 to Skinning skill. * adds +10 to Skinning skill. * adds +5 to Mining skill. * adds +5 to Herbalism skill. * See Boosting Your Fishing Skill for a table of the many items that add to Fishing skill. These items can allow you to skin creatures with levels greater than 70, or catch fish in areas that require greater than 375 Fishing skill. Trainers * The Trainer page has links to a comprehensive list of trainers for each profession/skill. * The Profession trainers by skill page is currently incomplete and out of date. --Murph 18:18, 25 April 2007 (EDT) Profession Types Most professions fall into one of three categories: Gathering Users of this profession mostly gather or harvest items from resources throughout the game world to increase their proficiency. * Fishing: Requires a Fishing Pole and a body of water with Fish. * Herbalism: Harvest herbs scattered throughout the world. * Mining: Requires a Mining Pick to mine protruding mineral veins or deposits for minerals, ore and stone. Use a Forge to smelt the ore you find into bars of metal. * Skinning: Requires a Skinning Knife to skin corpses marked as Skinnable for leather, hides and scales. Crafting Users of these professions mostly make items from other ingredient items (herbs, bars, meats, etc.) taken from the gathering professions or created by building professions. Blizzard calls these "Production professions". Most folks in game call them crafting or building. * Alchemy: Combine herbs and other reagents into elixirs, oils, potions and other useful (usually liquid) substances. Most recipes require various types of vials. High Level Alchemists can also transmute essences and metals into other essences and metals. * Blacksmithing: Make metal weapons for all and armor for Mail- and Plate-wearing classes. Also create items from stone to temporarily buff weapons. * Cooking: Cook raw ingredient items and combine them with various spices to produce better Food. Requires a Cooking Fire, oven, flame or similar. * Engineering: Engineer all sorts of useful (and some not so useful) gadgets from mostly metal, minerals and stone. * First Aid: Make cloth into bandages and various aiding items (anti-venoms, etc.). * Jewelcrafting: Craft rings, necklaces, BoP trinkets, jeweled headpieces, and rare/powerful socketed items to be placed in special armor or weapons. The extra ability of Prospecting comes with this craft, which allows you to prospect rare minerals from raw ore that has been mined but not smelted. * Leatherworking: Create all sorts of leather goods (mostly armor) from leather, hides, and various other ingredients. Also produce armor kits usable on pants, boots, gloves, and chest pieces of all armor types. Usually requires various types of thread to make finished items. Leatherworkers can also make very low level cloth capes and, after level 40, sets of mail armor. * Tailoring: Sew all sorts of cloth goods including many types of clothing and most importantly, bags for carrying other items. Also weave raw cloth items (linen, wool, silk, mageweave, etc.) into bolts of that type of cloth. Usually requires various types of thread to make finished items. Mooncloth can only be made by a tailor. Service Really the "other" category, but generally covers professions that primarily provide a service over producing equipable items or consumable buffing items. * Enchanting: Extract (disenchant) magical dusts, essences and shards for use to enchant various attributes, powers, and properties to all sorts of equipable items. You can also make wands and oils that can be applied to weapons providing a temporary buff. Additional Information *Farming is a term used to describe the act of gathering reagents/materials to make Profession items - usually referring to hard-to-find ingredients. See the Places to Farm article for more details. *Factions Page Faction. *1-300 Profession Guides External links Category:Game Terms Category:Characters Profession